Mirror Space

[Scott Ritchie]

Vitaliy Margolen wrote:
> Scott Ritchie wrote:
>> Marty Cannon wrote:
>>> Hey guys,
>>> Since the wine.budgetdedicated.com <http://wine.budgetdedicated.com>
>>> server was down all weekend, I thought I'd offer an additional mirror
>>> location.
>> It should be up for good now, so this won't be necessary.
> Isn't  that what you said last time? <g>
> 
> That's why it's called a mirror not the primary distribution point. More
> mirrors - less load on one server, less chances we'll have lots of unhappy
> users because they can't get the best software in the world <g>
> 
> My understanding there isn't anything special about apt repository
> mirroring, they are just files & directories under some URI.
> 

It is, however smartly directing traffic between the two servers is a
problem.  If some requests go to one server and some to the other, then
they have to be in sync all the time (even a few minutes for rsync to
catch up will result in lots of scary "invalid signature" errors for
users).  This means you need a smart load balancing server at the front
end that knows when each mirror behind it is up or down and redirects
traffic accordingly.

I don't think it's worth bothering to set that up, as my medium term
plan is to migrate users to a real Launchpad PPA for Ubuntu 9.10.  In
9.10, it'll actually be much easier to add PPAs (and their unique key),
so I can cut the instructions on the download page dramatically.
Launchpad has that sophisticated mirroring infrastructure already.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie